My good friend Peter over at SlashFilm was just sent a new photo from the set of Hancock. That’s old news, right? Nope - it was taken in Times Square yesterday night. How is that possible when the movie comes out in about a month? Apparently Hancock was doing very late reshoots in New York City yesterday, most likely as a result of the ratings troubles they’ve encountered that were detailed in this chat with director Peter Berg. Good news? Bad news? Neither really, but definitely interesting and worth noting. I think my interest in Hancock is definitely starting to increase the more I hear about it.

The photo below, taken yesterday, shows Will Smith in his leather superhero outfit that appears at the end of the most recent trailer. The report sent to Peter says that Times Square was packed with extras wearing 1980’s-style brightly colored clothes. They shot for 12 hours total in order to get the updated footage that they needed. Principal photography actually finished last November and Peter Berg has been working on editing and the visual effects since then.

In the previous article that we published last week, Peter Berg had mentioned that the film “remained surprisingly sexual, violent and true in spirit to an original script,” which had caused it to receive an R-rating twice from the MPAA. My guess is they hit a wall with the ratings board and had to go back and do reshoots in order to fix the issues. They can only edit, trim, and resubmit so many times before they realize the footage they have is R-rated no matter what.

If anything, this could be looked upon as a good thing. Instead of using the Fox method of crafty editing and audio dubbing, they just opted to reshoot it all from scratch. But then again, I could be missing the entire boat with my speculation and it could be a very bad thing. To be honest, I’m going to hold out and still hope for the best with Hancock. Although I hated it initially, I’ve flip-flopped entirely and now I’m hoping its great - especially with the more darker, violent side that Berg mentioned included.

Hancock is directed by Peter Berg, of The Rundown, Friday Night Lights, and The Kingdom previously. The film’s script was written by over five different writers, including John August, Vince Gilligan, Akiva Goldsman, Vincent Ngo, and Peter Berg. Hancock arrives in theaters on July 2nd this summer - Will Smith’s own 4th of July weekend spot.
Source: FirstShowing